One, as in Tomorrow

To-mor-row, to-mor-row, to-mor-row...Hear me singing???

One more day and

Lessons Learned:

The Story of Pilot Mountain School

comes out of the boxes and into readers' hands. I'm blown away at the possibilities, a tad bit nervous, too.

The countdown is all but over. It's down to "ONE."

The most obvious reference to "one" is found in the subtitle - Pilot Mountain. This mountain stood apart from the nearby South Mountains, as if an afterthought to creation. These mountains to me look like the back of an alligator, ridges rising out of the depths. They form a chain winding gently through the valley looking like a sea creature showing only the humps and bumps on its back. Yet there, to the side, alone, is this one little rebel mountain. It's so remarkable that two hundred years ago it was noted on charts as the pilot, the landmark to orient oneself in the wilderness.

How appropriate to name this one school after this one mountain.

Another obvious reference to "one" in the text is the old fashioned, one-room school that Pilot Mountain was destined to replace. At the turn of the twentieth century, there were over forty of them in the county.


Gilboa School as drawn by Jessie Patton in 1888

 

This picture of a one room Gilboa School hangs on the wall of the History Museum of Burke County. Since Gilboa is one of the schools that would eventually be replaced by Pilot Mountain School, I asked and was granted permission to use it in my book. Special thanks to the museum because it really adds to the story.

That's what this book is, a story. Once upon a time the title word was "History." Now, on the day before release, it is "Story." Oh, what one subtle change can mean. This book is a community's story, from the one room school to the one more day before launch.

Can't wait for you to read it.

Tomorrow.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen







Two Days to Launch

Day after tomorrow (sounds shorter than two days, doesn't it?)

Lessons Learned:

The Story of Pilot Mountain School

will be a released book, out in the world on its own.

Two days.

Two, as in two different societies - Cherokee and European settlers - that claimed the South Mountains as home.

Two, as in two peculiarities that the Scotch-Irish settlers brought with them across the Atlantic, a fierce love of independence from government control and the knowledge of brewing fine whiskey.

Two, as in two different groups that funded the early schools in the South Mountains, the mission boards of various Christian denominations and the North Carolina state government.

Two, as in the separate but equal system, white and colored schools that served the children of the state.

Two, as in two NYA (National Youth Administration) teams that helped adults build the school. We're talking fifteen year old boys!

Two, as in the partition between two classrooms was removed to make one large room in replacement of the promised auditorium. That would come along a decade later.

Finally (oh, there's more, but I'll stop here) two, as in two outhouses, one for boys, one for girls. The apple tree beside the girl's outhouse provided fun for the boys during caterpillar season!

Join me in two days at the launch, auditorium at Pilot Mountain School, ten o'clock in the morning.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Three Days to Launch

Only three more days and this project,

Lessons Learned:

The Story of Pilot Mountain School

will launch out into the world.

Counting down to next Tuesday's launch, today I'm at three. Three, a cheerful number, odd, rounded.

I searched through the book for the number three and found this, the number of stories in this hotel. What place does this hotel have in the history of this school? Read on.
Deep in the South Mountains, long before Pilot Mountain School was even considered, sat the largest wood framed hotel in the western part of the state. Three stories high, it was a majestic piece of architecture set in a beautiful location. A Scottish merchant traveling through the South Mountains during construction suggested that it deserved an equally majestic name. Glen Alpine.


Glen Alpine Springs Hotel

It opened in 1878. Even though it boasted a promenade around the top, a billiards room, even though there were large bedrooms with high ceilings for cooling in the summer, an orchestra for dancing, a dining hall that seated two hundred, even though the nearby mineral springs offered healing, it could not stay financially viable and closed before the turn of the twentieth century. It became a boarding school, a mission to the children of the community. That, too, was unsuccessful. It became the county poor house, a haven for the homeless. It burned to the ground in 1936, but its legends lived on in the stories I caught. No one I interviewed had seen it in person, most of them were born after it was destroyed. One by one, however, they told me of hiking to the foundation, of sitting on the front steps to nowhere, of imagining what life was like once upon a time inside this elegant yet doomed building.

Just one of the stories I caught. Can't wait for you to read the rest.

Three more days until the book will be released.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Four More Days

FOUR days until this project,

Lessons Learned:

The Story of Pilot Mountain School



gets launched into the world.

Today's operative word - four, such a non-invasive number. Four, square, completion.

One man I interviewed tried to get his point across of how poor his family was. At the beginning of the school year, his mother broke the solitary long pencil into four pieces, one for each child and no one got an eraser. There wasn't one.

Four classrooms - That was the size of the school on its first, first day in 1942. No lunchroom. No library. No principal's office. No auditorium. Plenty of nail kegs, however, since the school was still under construction. Overcrowding at nearby Salem school reached such proportions that these four classrooms were urgently needed.

Four sheets of paper - A story I caught: "I have done my lessons on a brown paper bag. Sometimes I did not have notebook paper because we could not get it. I was not made light of for that. I was not made fun of for that. The teacher checked the papers just like she did the notebook papers. Whatever grade I got, I got, and there was nothing said about it. She'd return it to me just like she returned it to everybody else. Sometimes we would get the Belk's Department Store bag. All they had on them on the front was Belk's in big black letters, but the bag was wide and tall. You could cut down the side and cut the bottom off it and you could make three or four sheets of writing paper from that. Every time I could get a Belk's bag from anybody, I would do that. You'd just do what you had to do, but it made you stronger."

Four brothers - One first grader that 1942 year had four brothers serving in the armed forces. The oldest, in the Air Force, was married with children and was not sent to battle abroad. The brother in the Marines contracted malaria and was hospitalized for a year. One brother in the Navy was shipwrecked and spent a long terror filled night in the ocean before being rescued. The second Navy brother was killed in action the same year this child started first grade.

Four - a number with a powerful story.

Can't wait for everyone to read the book!


Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Five Days and Counting

FIVE!!

Five days to the launch of

Lessons Learned:

the Story of Pilot Mountain School

Since today's countdown number is five, I searched through the text to find any references to the number five. It was like striking gold. Five here, five there, over and over, five.

The first reference to five is the number of teachers in the system in 1905 who had college degrees. Five. Out of the sixty-seven schools, only five teachers were certified.

On a lighter note, one person I interviewed talked about her cousin's goal to stand at home plate and hit as many baseballs over the new cafeteria behind the school. One fine Sunday afternoon, he succeeded in breaking five windows in the process. And he replaced every one of them with his own money.

Another five, the fee to join the electric co-op that came through the year before the school was built. Monthly power bill would be one dollar fifty cents.

Five gallon buckets were mentioned several times by the two school construction workers I interviewed. They remembered using them to carry mud for the bricklayers to lay the bricks.

The local school committee size was increased from three members to five after a disagreement over lunchroom policies, settled in part by the free lunch program started in the late fifties.

And my favorite, taken as a quote from the News-Herald announcement of a fund raiser at the school:

“Serving will begin at five and continue as long as hungry residents show up to get a feast of chicken pie.”

In five days, beginning not at five, but at ten in the morning, I will be reading the dedication from my book and then it will be available for purchase.

Join me, at the school auditorium. I can't wait.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Six Days to Launch!

Six more days!

I'm doing a countdown here until

Lessons Learned: The Story of Pilot Mountain School



launches into the world and today I'm at SIX! That neat, rounded figure. Six...

The number six appears early in the book, at the beginning of chapter four. I list the teachers who are waiting for the children on that 1942 first, first day of school.

Then I continue:

No lunchroom ladies. Not even a school custodian, although tall, lanky Bob Baker arrived in winter when the furnace needed stoking. Basically, what they had was four teachers, six grades, and a war.

Those six grades did not include kindergarten. That wouldn't come along for almost thirty more years. But you can do the math, four teachers, six grades. Something had to give to jam six grades into four classes. 

This was accomplished through combinations, the trademark of small rural schools. First graders usually went into one class only, if at all possible, to allow each child the benefit of an undivided teacher. From then on, however, the classes consisted of two grades together. The teacher assigned one group individual work while she went to the other grade to teach. Then while they did their work, she returned to the first group for the day's lessons.

Some children listened to both sides and learned two years at once and were able to skip a grade.

Some children listened to the lower grade for reinforcement, hearing the same lessons two years in a row.

Some children were lost and confused with a parallel instruction going on while they were trying to work on a completely different topic. They couldn't ask for help from the teacher because she was too busy with the other grade. Instead they had peer helpers that sat beside them. Sounds like a modern teaching technique, but used for generations.

Six grades, four teachers. Oh, and a war. That's chapter four. Can't wait for you to read it.

If you are anywhere near the schoolhouse on highway 64 west of Morganton, NC on Tuesday, September 25, please come to the launch. Ten o'clock in the morning. Hope to see you there...in six more days!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

One Week and Counting

September 25 is one week away, just one more week and Lessons Learned will be in the hands of readers.

I'm thrilled about the plans for the launch as much as I am for the release of the book itself. Well...almost. Anyway, my intention for the launch party is to present the book in the very place where all the action took place. That's the advantage of nonfiction. There really is such a place!

The launch will be in the auditorium of the school, now converted to a reception hall, by the way. We'll have a short ceremony at ten o'clock, complete with the big reveal (as if everyone hasn't seen the cover by now!) and the dedication. I'll read a few selections and then...gulp...the book will be in their hands. I won't be able to control it. It will be a teenager driving solo for the first time, leaving the proud mama smiling behind clenched teeth.

Then afterward, while everyone is thumbing through their copies of the book, finding gems, laughing at memories I've captured, we'll party. I'll be available to sign books and hopefully many of the characters in the book will be available to sign my personal copy. That's my plan. Can't wait!

The auditorium where the book signing will be held.

If you are nearby highway 64 southwest of Morganton between 9:30 and 2:00 on Tuesday, September 25, please stop in. There's always room for more.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen












Here's the plan.














9:30 until 2:00, with a book signing.